jwerwin80 Reviews

The Expendables (2010)

Most Excellent Stupid Action Movie

[8/10 · 22 November 2023]

TNT Used to do a movie night called, Movies for Guys Who Like Movies. This is a guy movie. This is a movie you can watch repeatedly with the same bunch a guys, shoot the breeze, enjoy some beverages, and soak up all of the on-screen action. Explosions! Gun fights! Hand to hand combat! Stupid one liners! Fun soundtrack that would sound great in an old school rock bar towards the end of the night. This movie has everything.

What's the story about? Who cares! That's a stupid question! If you enjoy seeing these stars in mindless action movies, you'll have a good time.

Do you need to suspend disbelief to enjoy this movie? Duh! Yes! Look, you have to throw away all logic and reasoning to have fun with this one. But I don't need every movie to be some artsty-fartsy A24 story about the horrors of real life. Sometimes I just want to shut off my brain and have a good time. That's why I love this movie. It's a very good time. So are the sequels.

Female Fight Squad (2016)

I've sat through dumber Action movies

[6/10 · 22 September 2023]

The only resemblance between this movie and Fight Club is in the title. The version I watched was called "Fight Squad" instead of Fight Club. Anyone who talks about politics in relation to this movie must have a very, very small ... feeling of self-confidence. Tiny!

The story follows a typical action movie arc. There are illegal MMA-style fights taking place in a warehouse. The fighters are all women. Our hero was champion, walked away, but returns because of danger to her family. There's a little more to the story, but deep down it's a slightly watered-down action movie.

Dolph Lundgren plays the father of two of the women. His role is minor, but his presence/charisma elevates the movie a lot.

The fights are ok. They're similar to the kind of fights you see in a Fast and Furious movie. Not great, but still kinda fun. I wish there were more of them.

It would have been nice if the villain had been more interesting. He's pretty dull. Also, no chase scenes. A couple of good chase scene would have made this a *lot* better.

I'll watch it again when I want a stupid action movie as background noise - something that doesn't require me to pay close attention but is kinda fun.

Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies (2012 Video)

Terrible Script & Some Bad Acting, But Otherwise Ok

[3/10 · 13 September 2023]

I was on board for the basic premise. I enjoyed Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. This movie appears to be a low effort attempt to capitalize on the success of that movie. The story and dialog are unfortunate. The acting, with the exception of Bill Oberst Jr. As Lincoln, is community theater level. Oberst has enough low-end B movie charisma to keep me engaged to watch the entire movie. But the rest of the cast - ack ack.

The story shows no imagination. Although it takes place during the US Civil War, there's no effort to tie the major events and action to any real historical events. Lincoln is the only person who knows what zombies are and how to kill them. He and some of his staff leave the White House, wearing their suits, to go kill zombies. They end up defending a fort against zombies, with the help of confederate soldiers and prostitutes (no nudity).

It's not a battle with any historical reference, With the exception of Lincoln, they're all nobodies. For humor, Lincoln says things that are famous quotes of future Presidents. Those attempts at humor pulled me out of the story, partly because they were forced and didn't sound natural. Partly also that I don't like overly-obvious winking at the camera.

Stonewall Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt are characters, but there's no attempt to tie their appearance in this movie to the historical record of them. Jackson dies in a way that's boring and stupid. If you're going to throw out the historical record, at least make it fun. The movie doesn't try to add to the Jackson or Roosevelt mythology or have the characters act anything like who they are supposed to be portraying. Plus the dialog is stilted and badly delivered. The characters are just boring.

Lincoln being pals with prostitutes sounds like a funny idea, but the execution lacks sex appeal. It's just more dull content.

That applies to the whole cast. The acting is boring. The characters are boring. They're not so bad it's funny. They're just dull. It looks like they did a casting call at a local community theater. With the exception of Bill Oberst Jr.as Lincoln. Like I said, his charisma is the only reason I cared enough to watch the entire movie. He's why I'm giving this 3 stars, not 1 star.

I guess they deserve some credit for getting this movie completed. That's something. Not everyone finishes a movie and has it shown on a streaming channel.

Uninvited (1988 Video)

Awesome Killer Cat - Dull Otherwise

[6/10 · 16 July 2023]

The killer cat is one of the greatest movie monsters ever conceived. It's brilliant. It's high-larious. I love everything about it. But, the rest of the movie has a lot of padding and a lot of filler.

The cat is an orange tabby. There's a second animal that might be a bat, or might be another cat, that comes out of its mouth and does the killing. It looks absolutely ridiculous, which is half of the fun. But in its defense, this is an original monster. The film creators get props for doing something original. That boosts the rating by a full star.

Unfortunately the movie is padded with unnecessary scenes of the kids dancing and just playing around. These don't advance the story, and don't really tell us anything about their relationships. All they do is pad the runtime.

George Kennedy helps it a little, but there's not much he can do. However, I'll watch this again just because the cat monster is so great.

Halloween Kills (2021)

Middle Chapter of a Trilogy - Older Cast & Not Sexy, But Very Satisfying

[8/10 · 17 February 2023]

Halloween Kills isn't part of the original Halloween franchise or any of the sequels that follow. It's the middle chapter of the trilogy of David Gordon Green Halloween movies. It picks up right where Halloween 2018 ended. Because it's the middle chapter of a trilogy, there are things that don't get resolved when this movie ends. That all gets taken care of in part 3, Halloween Ends.

H Kills has some excellent kills. This is a gory movie. Michael's victims are almost all older (like the rest of the cast), but the actors are talented enough to make you care about them even though they're not on screen very long.

The story is focused on middle aged characters who were alive when Michael murdered people they knew decades earlier. It's about their pursuit of Michael and intent to kill him. It's not Laurie vs. Michael. She's in the hospital recovering from being stabbed at the end of Halloween 2018. It's everyone in town vs. Michael. There's plenty of Jamie Lee Curtis, but she's not the one chasing Michael (aka The Shape).

Michael escaped the fire that ended the previous movie and he's continuing his murderous rampage. It's the same night. The angry mob who are pursuing him now include the two kids Laurie was babysitting in the original 1978 Halloween, Tommy Doyle and Lindsay. There's also a couple of other characters from the 1978 OG. They're all middle-aged grown ups now.

We're given some additional history and backstory about things that happened before Michael was put in the mental institution (that he escaped in Halloween 2018). We meet new characters when they were younger and things happened, and see them now. The backstory provides context for why killing Michael is personal for all of them.

It all builds up to a climax that I found very satisfying.

Fans who love the previous (unrelated) Halloween sequels don't like the new trilogy's mostly middle-aged cast (who aren't fashion-model 20 somethings playing teenagers), the amount of storytelling, the amount of dialog (much more than the old sequels), and they don't like seeing angry middle aged people (their parents?) people fighting Michael.

I get where they're coming from. I horror movies that are just boobs and kills, and require zero thinking; but I also like it when a movie has depth and characters. The actors don't have to be f-able as long as I get great kills. A well thought out story with well thought out characters is a bonus. It's a plus, not a minus.

The new trilogy goes out of it's way not to be connected to the all of the other Halloween sequels, so I don't understand the haters who are mad that it's a different story. But even the haters will admit Halloween Kills and the rest of this trilogy has great (insane) gore and great kills.

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama 2 (2022)

Beneath My Low Expecations

[4/10 · 10 December 2022]

This didn't do it for me, and I'm totally bummed out about having to say that. I'm a big fan of the original, love the cast and Uncle Impy. I wanted to enjoy this. I'm cool with low budget/low effort movies if they do something fun. I didn't like any of the characters except the imp. Should have spent more on hair, makeup, wardrobe, and script re-writes.

The characters lacked passion, especially the women. They were all just reading lines off of cards.

I'm bummed out that more effort wasn't put into helping Michelle Bauer and Brinke Stevens look pretty. I met Michelle and making her look sexy, and in character, would have required very little effort.

Also, the nudity felt gratuitous. Granted it was gratuitous in the original, but there was story motivation and dialog during it. In this it was just kinda there and not all that sexy.

Like I said. This one just didn't do it for me. Even when movies are so bad they're funny, the filmmakers are trying their best to make the best movie they could.

Beware the Slenderman (2016)

Major Disappointment - Irresponsible and Exploitive

[3/10 · 7 March 2022]

I'm very disappointed and surprised HBO would air something this irresponsible. I was hoping this documentary would take the sensationalized story and put it into thoughtful context. Nope. Halfway into the movie there was no longer any journalistic reason to show Slenderman drawings or videos. The decision to continue to titillate with them was because the documentary needed filler - it doesn't have very much information about one of the two girls.

We learn that one of the girls is an undiagnosed schizophrenic. It turns out that she'd probably been symptomatic since she was 3 and had learned how to hide it. Her parents didn't know she had symptoms until she was put in jail for this attempted murder.

This is when I'd expect this documentary to stop talking about Slenderman and get serious. Nope - bring on more homemade Slenderman videos and kids creepy drawings.

The problem is that they don't have much to say about the other girl. There's never a detailed discussion about her motivations. As far as the court is concerned, she's a "normal adult." But she's still a 12-year-old girl who wanted to kill one of her friends and leave her to die.

There's not even a good discussion of schizophrenia. There's a great interview where her dad talks about being schizophrenic and what he lives with daily. He wonders whether his personal symptoms are similar to his daughter's? Because there was so little information about the other girl, this would have been the opportunity to bring in data - percentage of schizophrenics who commit violent crime. What will his daughter's care will be like in prison? More talk about the genetic connection in schizophrenia and what parents can do - and if the answer to that question is nothing, that should be call to action for more funding for mental health care.

It's like a 50/50-coin flip on whether this documentary does more harm than good.

Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)

More Bark Than Bite

[3/10 · 31 January 2019]

Hammer gothic horror films are known for lots of tedious dialog to support some frightening characters. This film is virtually all tedious dialog and almost no fright. The dialog in this film is dull. The story is dull. And Dracula himself is a pretty boring vampire. Hammer films aren't know for snappy repartee, but they are usually much more engaging than this.

In this film, Dracula's master plan is to bore people to death. He's not especially bloodthirsty. This story isn't about vampires who want to bite your neck and suck your blood. Dracula has no interest in taking brides or creating followers that will serve as a buffer between himself and any would-be vampire slayers. A woman gets turned into a vampire, but Dracula eventually kills her because he no longer needs her. He refuses to bite a potential bride because: a) he waits too long ... meant to bite her earlier in the evening but now the sun is rising, darn. b) he eventually decides he's disinterested her - she's not even worth biting just to consume her blood.

Dracula prefers to use his power of hypnosis to get people to do his bidding. He doesn't want to bother with biting them and turning them into vampires. For whatever reason he's not into those long-term relationships. That makes him a pretty boring vampire.

Dracula's enemies in this film are three men who are not especially likable. One of them is such a jerk that you want to see Dracula kill him. The other two are dullards who we don't get to know at all and so whether they live or die is of no consequence.

With Hammer films, you hope that the story will eventually lead up to "the good part" -- the big showdown at the end of the movie. Sometimes the story is great, sometimes it isn't, but "the good part" is always worth waiting for ... except in this movie. When Dracula is finally destroyed, it isn't at the hand of another character. It just sorta happens. You don't feel like justice has been served or that good triumphed over evil, even just for a day. The story ends like it begins and you're left wondering if anyone learned anything.

This might be watching if you're a hardcore Hammer freak, but there are much better Hammer vampire films.

Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)

Boring Songs and Story With Less Flavor Than Vanilla Ice Milk

[1/10 · 7 December 2018]

I've sat through many movies I disliked. I've sat through films that are flat out boring. I sat through all of Jean-Luc Godard's "Sympathy for the Devil" and several of Andy Warhol's movies. About 20-25 minutes into Anna and the Apocalypse, I just couldn't take it anymore. This movie not only wallowed in lameness, but it just kept getting worse. The characters are flat, one-dimensional, and mind-numbingly boring. The songs are unlistenable. The idea of sitting through this became more painful than I could stand. I walked out.

The music is completely devoid of soul. They're like white bread without crust. Nothing in this film will remind you of Elvis, James Brown, or even Bing Crosby. Even the Andrews Sisters, the queens of uninspired WWII harmonies, are more dynamic and exciting than this.

People who attempt compare Anna and the Apocalypse to Shaun of the Dead are either delusional or liars. Shaun of the Dead had zombies. Anna and the Apocalypse has zombies. That's the only thing the two movies have in common. Shaun of the Dead is funny. Anna and the Apocalypse is devoid of humor. Shaun of the Dead has interesting characters who do things that are suprising. Anna and the Apocalypse has flat, uninteresting characters who follow painfully predictable tropes.

At a certain point I knew there was no way I was going to make it to the end. I was disappointed that I wasn't going to see the apocalypse, but I just couldn't take it anymore. Luckily, the theater was kind enough to give me a pass to see another movie.

Free Solo (2018)

Self-indulgent Narcissism at Its Finest

[3/10 · 10 October 2018]

I can't remember the last time I walked out of a movie. I'll sit through pretty much anything, hoping to find some kind of redeeming quality. This movie lost my attention early. I don't know the point of showing scenes of Alex Honnold and his girlfriend shopping for a house, and shopping at Home Depot for appliances. In general, this movie feels more like an episode of a reality tv show than a documentary about rock climbing. My takeaway is that Alex Honnold does not view himself as an artist and doesn't have any existential views about what he does. He's a guy who is self-obsessed and climbs rocks just so he can say that he climbed them. His favorite word is "I."

Production-wise, there was a joke when I was in college that "cinéma vérité" is French for "shakey camera." There's a lot of unnecessary hand held camera work in the beginning of this movie. My guess is that the filmmakers think that makes it all look more authentic, even when a shot could easily have been done with the camera on a tripod or some other support -- like when Honnold is sitting at a desk answering questions at the beginning of the film.

I don't know who would enjoy this movie outside of a few fanboys. Critics fawning over it puzzles me. This can easily wait to be viewed when it's on Netflix or Amazon or some other streaming service.

Truth (I) (2015)

A Drama About the Consequences of Losing a Big Fight

[8/10 · 19 October 2015]

Truth is a throwback to movies like All the Presidents Men. It's a serious drama about politics. It's also a lesson in modern politics and modern media. The players in this film don't understand the power of the Internet and how fast things can explode. They're also taken off guard when the story changes from their subject to them. That change in focus allows the real story, the Truth, to be completely obscured, ignored, and forgotten.

Bottom line, it's a good movie. It's not epic or brilliant. It's not an Oscar contender. But it's really good. Cate Blanchett is always so good in everything that all she has to do is breathe on a piece of film to make people think its Oscar worthy. The whole cast, Robert Redford, Dennis Quaid, Elisabeth Moss, Topher Grace ... they're all great.

The only flaw for me is that Mary Mapes (Blanchett) and Dan Rather (Redford) are shown as people without flaws. No one who is an angel ascends that high up the big corporate totem pole. It requires a degree of narcissism to have that kind of ambition. These portrayals lack that level of honesty.

Story synopsis: During the 2004 election campaign, the candidate's military service was a big issue. 60 Minutes did a story about President George W. Bush's service in the Air National Guard. During Vietnam, politicians (Democrats and Republicans) would pull strings to keep their sons out of combat duty. The Air National Guard was where Bush (and other rich kids) served during Vietnam.

The first chunk of the movie Truth focus on Mapes and her team looking for documentation to corroborate official military records that seem to indicate Bush rarely if ever showed up for duty. There's no record of him even showing up for his draft physical. They've already documented that Bush was permitted to take an extended leave to serve on a family friend's political campaign and was also allowed to end his term of service early. But verifying Bush's failure to even show up would add a lot to the story.

Eventually Mapes is given some photocopies of memos that are the smoking gun. The documents come from deceased Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian and confirm that Bush was a perpetual no-show. But the documents are photo copies and hard to authenticate.

CBS's programming schedule puts Mapes in a bind. It's decided that the Bush story needs to be put together within 5 days. That doesn't give them enough time to properly check the validity of the memos. Some sources are saying they're good, some are saying they aren't. Mapes, Rather, and CBS make the decision to run the story.

And the memos turn out to be forgeries. Late in the movie Blanchett has a speech that indicates that whomever made the forgeries had access to a lot of inside information. Bottom line, she was played. She was had. And the people who did it were pros.

The second chunk of the movie is about stuff hitting the fan. After trying their best to defend themselves, Viacom/CBS put together an independent panel run by Republicans to investigate Mapes, Rather, and all of the people who did the Bush story.

In the fuss about photocopiers and fonts, the entire story about Bush's time in the Air Guard is tossed aside and branded false. The Truth, that it's well-documented that Bush was in a unit for rich kids and was allowed to do things that real members of the Guard don't get to do (take off for months to serve on a political campaign), or that he was discharged almost a year early ... all tossed aside and forgotten. The story of Bush's guard service was dead.

One of the big stories now is that Viacom/CBS is refusing to run ads for Truth. They don't want people to see this movie. There's a scene that discusses how President Bush refused to sign some changes to FCC regulations unless the regs were changed. Iit is implied that the changes were done to help Viacom/CBS. It is also implied that Viacom/CBS using this incident to fire long-time Bush family nemesis Dan Rather was done to pay back that favor and generally stay in the White House's good graces.

So when you look at big media's reviews of this film, keep in mind that some entities have business reasons to steer you away from it.

Color Me Obsessed: A Film About the Replacements (2011)

Monstrous Waste of Time

[2/10 · 5 November 2011]

This movie is everything that's bad about music documentaries, and none of the good.

There's no music. There's no footage of the band, and not even much in the way of photos. The filmmaker claims that he was trying to see if he could do a music documentary about a band without including the band. Based on what I saw, the experiment was a failure.

What we get instead is 2 hours of (expletive deleted) interviews with critics and other self-declared experts on the band. Most of it is just critics and musicians talking in meaningless superlatives. When the movie was over, I felt like I needed a shower to get all of that cow manure off of my skin.

There are s few people who have things to say that are relevant - some insiders from Minneapolis and project collaborators. But not enough to make this movie worth watching or renting.

As a historical documentary, the movie sucks. The movie is short on real information, and long on meaningless pseudo-intellectual blathering. The history that is presented is sanitized, and incomplete. There's more than one lie of omission in how people and events are portrayed.

For example, in the discussion of the Replacements appearance on SNL in 1986, Bob's wife describes how the band trashed the dressing room, but there's no mention of Paul swearing at Bob on live television. Also, there's no mention of how Lorne Michaels didn't just ban the Replacements -- he canceled an upcoming scheduled appearance by The Cure, and banned all rock bands for a long time. What we get instead is person after person yammering on and on about how being banned from SNL makes the Replacements one of the world's greatest bands.

An interview with Lorne Michaels, Harry Dean Stanton (the guest host) or any of the members of that SNL cast (Joan Cussack, Robert Downey Jr.) would have been interesting to see ... but this movie contains very few interviews that are actually relevant to anything.

There's a lot of talk about why album XXXX or song XXXX is the greatest thing ever recorded ... and subjecting an audience to 2 hours of (expletive deleted) doth not make a watchable documentary.

Needless to say this movie is a massive disappointment.

Hatchet (2006)

Unwatchable! I almost walked out.

[1/10 · 30 December 2010]

There is nothing about Hatchet that I can recommend. It is a completely incoherent mess and a waste of time.

Hatchet doesn't even work as a movie that's so bad it's entertaining (ala Plan 9). It's an empty suit. There's no continuity of story or character. This is just Adam Green with a camera making up stuff as he goes along. A professional script editor would have been a huge help and a good idea.

Tony Todd (from the movie Candyman) has a scene at the beginning of the movie that is a perfect example of why Adam Green has no business going near a movie set. Green clearly has no vision, and has no idea whether he wants Todd to be funny or scary. The result is that he's neither. It looks like Green was both afraid to direct Todd and just making stuff up on the spot for Todd to say. The result is a waste of talent.

None of Green's characters are sympathetic. None of the characters display any virtues that would make the audience care whether that person lives or dies. Because Green is just making up stuff as he goes, the personality and values of the characters change from minute to minute. The result is that you just don't care about any of these people, and as a result you just don't care about this movie.

When it comes to the legend of Victor Crowley, there's no process of discovery for the audience. The legend is recited, several times, each is slightly different. Each version becomes more tedious. Again, it's painfully obvious this stuff is being made up as they go along.

I went to a premiere in Hollywood, which opened and closed with Adam Green giving profanity laced speeches about why his movie was better than anything else being shown. He claimed that he alone was the savior of horror. How dare Eli Roth make a sequel to Hostel! Sequels are for unoriginal losers! (Green is of course hoping to make a Hatchet sequel) Most importantly, whenever Hatchet gets shown anywhere it means that any one of thousands of better independent movies, including independent horror movies, was not seen. If you have a choice of watching this movie or watching nothing, watch nothing.

P2 (2007)

It's OK -- nothing special

[6/10 · 10 November 2007]

This movie takes a long time to get going, and I frequently found myself throwing in the flag. There are a lot of events which happen that just don't make sense and don't ring true. Initially Wes Bentley irritated me, but eventually I got to like him and his character. He's pretty good at playing a dissociative psychopath. Once the story got going it was easy to forgive the obvious mistakes and just have fun with it. The setting, a parking garage, is very cold and unforgiving. It's all concrete. That aesthetic helps set a tone that Thomas is going to be unforgiving. closed, and cold with people he doesn't like. Angela (Rachel Nichols) doesn't suffer from stupid chick syndrome. She makes a few smart moves, and that makes it easy to root for her and empathize with her. You want her to kick butt, but Thomas is a pretty strong opponent.

30 Days of Night (2007)

A Fun Ride While It Lasts

[7/10 · 20 October 2007]

I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I expected to. The first two acts are great. It starts to drift into lameness during the third act, but trying to find a way to come up with a positive resolution must have been pretty tough. What makes this movie fun is the sheer hopelessness of the situation.

Another plus is that the movie takes a little more time than usual to introduce us to all the characters and set up the premise. Horror movies frequently rush through the setup. This one lets the action tell the story -- we're spared the stupid character speech that tells us the who set up.

The attention to story telling, combined with the dark setting, make this one a lot of fun. I just wish the ending had been stronger.

Disturbia (2007)

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys vs. Ed Gein

[1/10 · 13 May 2007]

I had to fight the urge to get up and leave. This is "Rear Window" for idiots. Rather than using a bird's eye view of people's lives to provide insight into the human psyche, this is Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys going after Ed Gein.

A woman is kidnapped by someone driving a dark blue vintage 60's Mustang with a dent in the front fender. Your neighbor pulls into his garage in the middle of the night driving a dark blue vintage 60's Mustang with a dent in the front fender. What do you do? Logical people call the cops. These characters decide to watch him with binoculars.

Add dialog that was written by a 10th grader, dramatic music cues that feel more accidentally satirical than empathetic, and pretty weak art direction, and you've got a truly awful teen movie.

The most interesting piece of dramatic tension, a relationship between Carrie-Anne Moss and David Morse, is a throw away. It's mentioned once and never returns.

And by the way ... Sarah Roemer has nothing on Grace Kelly. Alfred Hitchcock loved sexy women and Grace Kelly was a total looker.

Factory Girl (2006)

A Train Wreck Story

[7/10 · 4 February 2007]

Factory Girl reminds me a lot of Syd and Nancy. It's like watching a train wreck and not being able to stop it. It's a story of innocence lost.

Although Edie Sedgwick had her drug issues, her biggest problem is her addiction to attention from Andy Warhol. Guy Pearce gives a merciless portrayal of Warhol as a shameless, bloodsucking, sociopathic, narcissist who cruelly leaches off of anyone who'll let him -- i.e. an accurate portrayal.

Sienna Miller shows us Edie Sedgwick in all of her glory -- happy, charismatic, generous, sexy, kind, needy, shallow, spoiled, myopic, and very frightened. She's terrific in this movie and is clearly on her way to becoming a massive superstar.

I'm surprised this was released after the beginning of the year. The art direction was as good as a lot of previous Oscar nominees.

An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

A must see for literally everyone

[10/10 · 29 May 2006]

"An Inconvenient Truth" is a 90 minute environmental science lecture delivered by Al Gore. You'll laugh, you'll think, you'll eat popcorn. You've done worse things with 90 minutes. And no -- I don't think he's planning to run in 2008.

Global warming is indeed a theory. So is gravity. Gore argues that the connection is the speed of the consequences if you choose to ignore them. You know what happens when you ignore gravity. Things have changed enough that the consequences of ignoring climate changes are hitting us just as hard and fast -- more tornadoes, more hurricanes, more droughts.

I was blown away by Gore's lecture, but apparently the fossil fuel industry execs were even more blown away than I was. They've started running attack ads, and are spending a fortune to convince you and the people around you to ignore this movie, and ignore this issue. Their mantra is that there's nothing wrong -- go back to sleep.

Remember, there's no link between tobacco and cancer. There's no relationship between diet and obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart attacks. There's no such thing as acid rain. Wiretapping your phone keeps you free from tyranny. Plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, so there's no way that carbon dioxide can be an environmental problem. Oceans are so big that they don't change temperature. Glaciers melt all the time, and then they reform. It's all normal. There's nothing wrong. Everything is under control. Go back to sleep.

There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, it's probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. It fool me. Fool me twice and ... you don't .... you don't get fooled again.

So get in your SUV and go see An Inconvenient Truth -- take your kids. Get everyone you know to see this movie. Get them to get everyone they know to see this movie. You've done worse things with 90 minutes.

Think about the data. Draw your own conclusions. Decide on your own course of action. Yeah -- this really is that important.

Against the Ropes (2004)

Wallows in Lameness

[1/10 · 21 February 2004]

This was a huge, huge disappointment. It's a lot like a weak boxer. The story starts strong, but about halfway into things it loses it's legs. They should have thrown in the towel during the final act, because this movie was not holding itself up.

It's bad enough that the story has nothing to do with the real life of Jackie Kallen, these characters have nothing to do with reality at all. Even as a piece of fiction, I couldn't buy what they were doing. The characters black and white, good and evil, and there's nothing complex about them. This movie doesn't try to challenge you to think at all. Tony Shaloub plays a thinly veiled Bob Erim caricature who is always evil. He's never nice to anyone. Omar Epps plays a thinly veiled James Toney, minus Toney's uncontrollable temper, and with a much higher IQ. Epps' character Luther Shaw is just a kid who's had a run of bad luck and needs a chance. He's a hero. Ryan is also someone who just needs a chance. He and Ryan's characters have to learn to trust each other, believe in themselves, and have enough heart to follow their dreams. In this world, good always triumphs over evil and people always get their dreams.

Here's how Kallen describes the movie on her own site:

"The true story of boxing manager Jackie Kallen - dubbed the First Lady of Boxing - a former Detroit TV personality, publicist, and suburban mom, who broke into the predominantly male boxing community and guided the careers of several fighters, including champions James Toney and Thomas Hearns. Kallen later went on to become the commissioner of the International Female Boxers Association."

This movie is an insult to the sport of boxing. When you think about how low boxing has sunk recently, anything that insults boxing has to be absolutely awful. The big fight sequence at the end of the movie has to be one of the worst boxing scenes in the history of the movies. Think of the ridiculous boxing sequences in the later Rocky sequels, and then imagine trying to make them even more absurd. The characters do nothing but take cheap shots and then smack each other with devastating blows squarely on the jaw.

The saddest thing is the real story of Jackie Kallen would have made a great movie. Meg Ryan portrays her as a spinster working as a secretary for a boxing promoter in Cleveland. The real Jackie Callen was married, had a son, and was the publicist for the Kronk gym in Detroit. Callen's first big fighter, James Toney, was from Ann Arbor. The script doesn't even set the story in Michigan where things really happened.

In this world there's no Don King, no mafia, no sleezy gamblers ... it's just not the real world of boxing. There's also no controversial fight between James Toney and David Tiberi. In the real world, so many people felt the scoring of that fight was so wrong that the fight must have been fixed. That decision (for Toney) launched an investigation into boxing by the US Congress.

For her part, Meg Ryan offers no surprises and just plays another blonde who smiles a lot. Really, this is a role that should have been played by Marg Helgenberger of CSI. Ryan is too innocent. Helgenberger would have brought credible toughness and credible sexuality to the role. Charles Dutton is always amazing, and Omar Epps looks like an up and coming action star, but the script isn't up to their talents. Tony Shaloub also does a lot with a poorly written character.

If this movie really had told the real story of Jackie Kallen, it would have been worth seeing. Instead it tells a predictable fictional story about unoriginal characters that lack believable human traits.

Don't bother.

Tears of the Sun (2003)

Smacks you in the face with the reality of ethnic cleansing

[8/10 · 9 March 2003]

This isn't your average action/war movie. Bruce Willis and his group of special ops are sent to Nigeria to pick up an American doctor working as a missionary. The doctor is directly in the path of Nigerian troops and rebel forces. In their wake they leave a trail of corpses, rape victims, dismembered bodies, and lots of blood. It's a ring side seat to ethnic cleansing.

The doctor refuses to accompany Bruce Willis out of the country unless the he agrees to rescue everyone in the mission. So the question becomes ... do you just take the doctor and leave? That accomplishes your mission and makes everyone happy. No one will blame you for leaving behind the refugees who will certainly be slaughtered. It's not your country, its not your war.

Tears of the Sun slaps you in the face with the reality of ethnic cleansing. It also acts as a reflection of the killing and violence we have on our own streets. No one says we have to do anything. We all to provide for ourselves and our families. That's a tough job. No one says that we also need to care about the homeless, people without medical insurance, or schools that don't have decent textbooks (or even toilet paper).

The movie is a gut check. The world will say it's okay to just do your job, but do you feel like it's okay?

Resident Evil (2002)

Cool idea, but poorly executed. The script is boring.

[3/10 · 2 September 2002]

The basic idea for this movie is pretty cool, and visually the movie is engaging. Unfortunately, it looks like they spent all their money on visual effects and creating a cool look, and nothing on the script. One of the basic rules of story telling is show, don't tell. Most of scenes involve the characters standing around explaining to each other (i.e. explaining to us in the audience) what is happening. This makes the story move incredibly slow.

The most interesting part of the story is how Alice (Milla Jovovich) has lost her memory. She knows that she's directly involved somehow, but doesn't know what she's done. Unfortunately she never reveals much about herself, so we don't get to know her enough to care about her. There are a couple of very awkward partial nude scenes that look painfully like the producers wanted to show Jovovich naked and she wouldn't play ball.

This one really isn't worth the effort. The action scenes are few and far between, and aren't very well done. The story is so painfully slow that it seems to take forever to get started, and never really delivers enough energy to put you on the edge of your seat. It's really a shame because there are some very cool plot elements to the story, but it's just so poorly written that you're left wondering what this movie could have been if it had been given to a capable writer.

On the Nose (2001)

Hysterically funny, intelligently written, a great movie!

[10/10 · 27 June 2002]

This movie is hilarious. It's a warm hearted story about a compulsive gambler with an Australian Aboriginal head in a jar that picks winning racehorses. If you can't laugh at a head in a jar, you just don't have a sense of humor! The script treats the characters with respect -- the characters are true to themselves and never betray their humanity to advance the story. Robbie Coltrane and Dan Akroyd head up a cast that's absolutely terrific. Some of the humor in the movie is very Irish, but there's so much to laugh at that everyone can enjoy it.

This is one of the best movies I've seen this year. It's very frustrating that this movie hasn't yet made it into distribution outside of the film festival circuit. I've been telling friends about it, but there's no place anyone can go see it or even rent it. Robbie Coltrane did a movie a few years back called, "The Pope Must Die," which was widely distributed in the United States. "On the Nose," is a much funnier movie than "The Pope Must Die," and I think it appeals to a wider audience. Hopefully this movie will burst out all over America very soon. When it does, I'll drag everyone I know into the theater to see it.